Boomerang Kids: Hey, Mom, I'm Home

Her house was already full to bursting with kids—and then the older boys moved back in. How one mother made room for them in her house and heart

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Photograph: Zohar Lazar

When Dan goes, he’ll be doing what he’s supposed to do, lighting out for the territories. I’ll be relieved.

I’ll also be bereft.

It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out that a woman who has nine children has never hankered after an empty nest.

I really don’t know how our sons will look back on this time. But since they got a chance to live with us in the middle of our lives, when we were both still tough and vigorous, for them it might be like that moment in Our Town when Emily, as a ghost, looks at her parents and cries out, “They’re so young and beautiful! Why did they ever have to get old? But just for a moment now, we’re all together...just for a moment, we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.”